


The Oaths They Take

by Legbird



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: Gen, [picture of charlie day with his pepe silvia board], based on a weird headcanon i have, but ya'll can interpret it as you see fit, it's implied i guess???, this isnt't a really shippy fic at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 22:44:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5603686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legbird/pseuds/Legbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug." -Modern Hippocratic Oath, ~1964.</p>
<p>People aren't naturally born aggressive and jaded. That goes for everyone, even the dicks with scalpels and syringes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Oaths They Take

**Author's Note:**

> This is absolutely based off of a wild mass guess relating to Worth's age and where exactly he quit school. Taken from the DeviantART Q and A sessions, Livejournal archives, donation comics, and other weird background details seen in the clinic throughout the comic. Cheers to 2016!

     Medicine is fickle. _Life_ , in particular, is fickle. Money's a chore, people are unanimously pains in the ass, the weather can be particularly shit; hell, families can be brutal and dysfunctional. But, medicine. Medicine is _always_ brutal in the quiet way. Where healing either works a miracle or sets up a funeral. Where both the doctor and patient can feel their bones itch with anticipation. Medicine is not God's miracle button, no matter how smart you are or how good you are with patients.   
  
     Somewhere, someone's getting off on a bottle of illicit Adderall, and there he is, getting into an argument over the appropriate care for someone who's been hit with some kind of magic bullet. At least, that's what Worth thinks it's about. It was about that when they started at least, but the subject's spiraled into something that he can't quite place.  
  
    "And what's with the jokes? 'Oh, it's gotta be some holy magic, see? My hand can almost go through your clavicle!', what the fuck, Worth?" Conrad barks, already having him backed against the exam room door, hands gesturing with each question. Something about hands in his face throws Worth off just enough to swat at him with a confounded blink.  
  
    "Oh, for _fuck's_ sake! What'd ya want me t' say? Yer gonna be fuckin' dead, kiddo?"   
  
    "You did!"   
  
    "Exactly! Gave 'im both options, so clearly it ain't that damn bad. Now, quit yer bitchin' or 'm gonna bite yer hand if it comes back t' my face." He retorts, gangly fingers wrapped around a particularly lukewarm wrist, sucking on his teeth all the while.  
  
    "Can't you show a little compassion, he could've died!" Conrad's voice escalates, looking past the glass to a heavily sedated redhead leaning up against his zombie companion. Worth shoulders his way into the line of sight and cuts off the view. The grip tightens with the clench of his jawline, and it's obvious. Painfully obvious.  
  
    "Think I didn't realize that when I was stuffin' gauze int' him? Don' give me shit about compassion, that whole scene was an act of compassion!"  It's a growl at first, shifting to something slightly more exasperated.  
  
    "Then why don't you act like it?" Conrad's question is more of a strained demand, and for some reason, it causes Worth's brain to flatline. His grip softens, even if for a moment, stunned into a dazed sort of quiet. They're barely arms-length apart, and for some reason, his only coherent thought is "Punch".  
  
     So he does.  
  
     So he fails.  
  
    Conrad is particularly fast, vampiric speed kicking in at an inopportune time after a purely ridiculous and projected hit. His fist misses entirely, hitting nothing but air until it's wrenched down, fingers gripping his wrist, now.  
  
   "Ain't ya supposed t' be real shit at th' vampire thing?"  
  
   "Don't you fucking pin this on me! _You're_ the problem, here!" His voice is tense and wild, eyes wide with dwindling shock from the attempted attack. Worth snaps his arm back, wiggling free and slamming into the door all at once. He curses as he sidesteps around Conrad, heading back to his desk. He starts shuffling, mostly for an old shot glass and a rune or two, ignoring the ongoing conflict he's supposed to be a part of.  
  
  "What am I supposed t' do? Drop t' my knees any time someone gets a papercut? 'm a doctor, not some goddamn housewife." He grumbles, stopping his search to stare up at Conrad, lip curled in a crooked smirk.  
  
  "Whatever you're thinking, keep it to-"  
  
  "Yer supposed t' be th' housewife, anyways." He spits it out, with slight venom, immediately going back to his search. Conrad bites his lip, an act of some kind of reservation before the dam breaks in a pure fit of agitation.  
  
 "Show a little more emotion than ' _Mad_ ' or ' _Sarcastic Dick_ ', perhaps?" He asks. "I mean, Hanna's been through enough tonight, does he _really_ need you being an ass?"  
  
  The shot glass ends up on the desk with a heavy _clunk_ , followed by a near-empty bottle of cheap absinthe- mostly absinthe, plus some tap-water of suspicious quality, looking older than most of the grime left on the clinic walls. Worth doesn't really respond, too intent on pouring his "drink". He eyes it for a minute, slightly turned off by the clearly opalescent color. Not really one for heavily prepared spirits, but it's what was closest. He'll take it.  
  
  "He'll be fine. He's always up to his eyes in weird shit, he'll be fine." It's a quiet sort of mantra before he kicks back the shot, knuckles tensing on the edge of the table when he sets the glass down.   
  "It's about you being a tool, not about him being fine." Conrad sighs, exasperated.  
  
  "Hey, I got a deal goin' on with th' powers that be. If I ain't an absolute knob t' you idiots when ya get limbs severed 'r whatever- _th' world'll implode_." Worth shrugs, pulling a dented cigarette box from the lowest drawer on the desk, slipping it open and dumping out the contents.   
  
  "Can you be serious? At all?" A groan.  
  
   "I am serious, didn' say who's world it was." Worth unfurls a strip of paper in the pile,  a mess of circles and arrows. He squints a bit, mind slightly reeling from how shit that absinthe actually was. He'll complain about it later. Instead, he flips the cigar box over- checking the scrawling notes on the box about what the runes actually do. There's a bit of relief in knowing that they were sedatives and , essentially, painkillers. No fear of accidentally electrocuting or setting himself on fire, now.  
  
   "You're trying to get high, aren't you. You're ignoring the conversation, and trying to get fucking high." Conrad steps forward, just close enough to the desk to grab the old carton of cigarettes and read the back of the box. "Fucking typical."  
  
   "Hey, 'm ignorin' the conversation as much as humanly possible, but yer not really listenin' to me. Or lettin' me ignore it." He points an accusatory finger, but for some reason, his voice doesn't stick. It's a little too detached, like he's tired. Exhausted. He shakes his head, and looks for a second rune. His next question is equally disjointed- coming out of left field.   
  
   "Little quiz between friends, right now. How d'ya think I got 'ere? Not the dealin' with yer kind an' all that shit. Anyone with eyes can tell me that. But, how I got here. As in, clinic in a fuckin' alley off a' whatever street." His words slur at the beginning but find their ground as the question goes on, and he even stops his search, looking up at Conrad and taking a seat at his desk.   
  
   "Hanna said you dropped out of medical school." Conrad states, blunt. "And you've really got to stop calling me a friend."  
  
   "When and why, though. That's actually real important." Worth redirects the question, ignoring the friend comment.  
  
   "At least in your twenties, maybe? I think you hated books, or reading, or bedside manner. Maybe all three." There's a twinge of " _Why the fuck?_ " in Conrad's voice, and despite the vague sort of smile on his face, Worth shakes his head.  
  
   "I actually made it t' a pretty ritzy medical school. I got a bachelor's in pre-med. So, not absolutely stupid. I can read." He laughs, noting the look of vague astonishment on Conrad's face. "Yeah, I graduated in somethin' past high school, give me a fuckin' nobel prize."   
  
   "It's not that." Conrad mutters, squinting a bit. "It's more of a shock seeing you say you went to a nice medical school, which is worse than a nice art school. Money-wise, I mean."   
  
   Worth laughs, a bit of a rattle mixed with a cough and back to generally suspicious laughing. He can't help it. "Ya mean yer shocked that I had th' money t' do that? Money wasn' a problem, an' we-"  
  
   "You were actually well off?" The question comes off as a shock, Conrad slightly taken aback by the newfound information. Worth rolls his eyes and nods his head.  
  
   "That ain't what we came 'ere t' discuss."  
  
   "None of this is what we started discussing." Conrad grumbles.  
  
   "Anyways." Worth states, tipping back in his chair and kicking his feet up onto the desk. "If I had enough money an' brains t' go t' med school, why would I drop out?"  
  
    Nothing but radio silence for a few minutes, and the slightest comment of "I give up.", hands raised with a fair amount of lacking hostility. Worth smiles at that, vaguely.  
  
   "A'right, but let me make somethin' about this clear. What I'll tell ya t'night is between me an' you only. If Jolly Green an' Little Red Writin' Rune find out, I'll beat ya with an iron skillet 'til it blisters." His hands are folded in front of his face, brow furrowed when he stares at Conrad with an actual ounce of seriousness. Conrad's hands go up, a gesture of "Fine, have it your way." and  "Try me, asshole." burried somewhere between the unspoken lines. Worth takes that as good enough, a short nod of agreement as his hands tighten over a pair of runes on shoddily torn paper.  
  
   "Volunteer work." He says, shrugging.  
  
   "Okay, are you just trying to give yourself douche points, or are you really just that jaded?" Conrad asks, ire and disapproval evident in his voice. Worth shoots him a look, that specific look of "Fuck off" before continuing.  
  
   "Didn' even let me finish there. Th' volunteer work fucked with me because it was hospital shit. D'ya got any idea how many people die in a day at a hospital?" The comment is dry, void of any playful chiding that it usually owns, and a stale silence forms between them. He watches Conrad bite his lip, though. Uncomfortable.  
  
    "Enough. Old people, people yer age, teens, goddamn children. Th' lot a' them. An' ya think it's easy, they're strangers. Who th' fuck remember's a stranger's face? Until ya remember some dumbass kid chokin' on their own blood after some dare gone wrong. Then some terminal bloke downhill on a losin' battle. Then another. An' another. Before ya know it, ya got a rolodex a' corpses ya barely ever knew; an' ya feel like ya know 'em, anyways." There's tension in his voice, hands flexing over the table. He's wrestling with his emotions long enough to miss Conrad inch forward a bit, leaning against the desk with a cautious stare- eyes following Worth when he slinks down against the desk. "An' th' worst part is, all these damn people are there lookin' fer some cure, something medical, some kind of miracle."  
  
  There's a long period before anyone speaks again, Conrad slightly disturbed by whatever emotional honesty just took place while Worth shared a vaguely similar feeling, doused in a fair amount of regret and blood curdling embarrassment. He sits back up.  
  
   "If ya don' start makin' jokes an' seperatin' yerself, you can't do your job. That whole sphere a' yer world will fuck up an' yer emotions can get someone killed. Food fer thought." There's nothing but seriousness and warning in his voice.  
  
  "Why tell me this? Why tell me anything about yourself at all?" Conrad asks, quiet. It's mostly confusion, but, he can feel an ounce of care. Just enough to be curious.  
  
  "Ya asked why 'm always a dick about medical shit 'r helpin' your merry band a' magical misfits. There's your answer. Now ya can quit antagonizin' me about it." Worth stares at him for a moment, waiting for some sputtering or sign of anger. Nothing really happens until he starts trying to use the runes, however.

  "You just gave me that little speech on death and the uselessness of medicine, and you're still trying to get high?" Conrad barks, distressed. Worth squints back at him, head cocked to the side. 

  "I implied medicine isn' a miracle button. This is magic, an' it is." His words are drawn out, hoping to drill the explanation through his skull.

  "Then what do you need a miracle button for?" Conrad asks, equally slow, verging on nearly too quiet to hear. Worth swears he can feel something crawling up his spine, and shudders at the thought. He's not expecting that level of thinly-veiled worry at all.

 "To forget that we ever 'ad that conversation. An' some other shit, but that's not relevant t' th' discussion. So."  He shrugs, and the minute he can see the gears turning in Conrad's head, he interrupts him."None. Of. Your. Business."

 "Well, I'm going to feel like shit if I let you get hammered for something weirdly emotional now." Conrad sighs, and Worth swears he's implying that he cares. Which is, if anything, too absurd for words.

  "If ya feel guilty, that's 'cause ya opened a weird Pandora's box with yer housewife 'Play Nice' attitude. If ya really feel that shitty, ya can stick around fer a bit an' make sure I don' swallow m' tongue 'r some shit within th' first five minutes."  Worth shrugs dismissively at the end, vision blurring through the application of the first rune. He's coherent enough to use the second and put his head down on the desk, but hazy enough to ignore whatever disapproving look he was getting for avoiding an entire emotionally deep discussion. He doesn't really care. Emotions are shit.

He jolts a little when a hand ends up tentatively petting at his hair, and if he had it in him to look up, he would. But he already knows the answer, he thinks. It's not worth it to try and smack it away, let alone even attempt to sit up. Bleariness fades into a loss of consciousness before he can do anything, anyways.

     It's better, this way.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
